Finally planning to begin your dream startup that you wanted to do for years? Confused regarding which hybrid mobile app development to opt for?
Google’s Flutter is the answer to all your confusions!
Before we even begin to list down reasons for you to choose Flutter for your startup, let’s quickly give you bits of information about Flutter first.
Flutter is a free and open source mobile SDK developed by Google to create Android and iOS mobile apps from a single codebase. Flutter can also be considered a solution for creating cross platform apps with beautiful UI. Flutter’s designing views are similar to web applications, so many analogies to HTML/CSS can be found.
Mobile apps have an increased demand in the current scenario due to which more and more start-ups have shifted their app development concerns to mobile app development. With the constant inflow of niche technologies and frameworks for mobile applications, it’s easier for mobile developers to create ingenious mobile applications.
Cross platform app development is gaining more popularity amongst start ups mostly because of its endless advantages. Google’s Flutter is new to mobile app development but creates beautiful native applications and helps develop cross platform apps with ease in lesser time to market.
Before we give you reasons to choose flutter development for startups, let’s understand why cross platform development is a beneficial option for startups!
Less Development Cost
A cross platform app will run on both Android and iOS, so you don’t have to invest individually in each platform. You just have to spend once for both the platforms and the ultimate cost will be way less than individual development cost of native Android and iOS apps.
Reusable Codes
The developers can use the app code again, which means in the case of each platform they can reuse the code and translate it into different programming languages. The end result is time and money efficient development process.
Easily Accessible Plugins
A wide range of plugins are available that make the entire development process easier and smoother. Accessing these huge variety of plugins is effortless and therefore the development process is also seamless.
Faster Development & Quick Testing
Due to all the above mentioned reasons, cross platform applications are developed faster. The code is written once and developers reuse it with different plugins and hence lesser development time. In terms of testing, a single QA is enough to test the features, functions and program of cross platform mobile app.
Now, that you know how cross platform is beneficial, here are the major reasons that mobile app startups choose Flutter!
Pocket Friendly
Budget is one of the major constraints in a startup. The owners are always looking for options that won’t burn a hole in their pocket for every aspect of their start-up, then why not for mobile application development too?
Enter - Flutter!
As you know that Flutter is a mobile SDK to create Android and iOS mobile apps from the same code base, it is understood that you don’t need to hire different developers to build a mobile application for both platforms.
Code Once and Run on Multiple Platforms
Developing for multiple platforms is one of the most challenging aspects of creating enterprise applications. As a start-up business owner you only need one team of developers with Flutter instead of multiple teams for creating both iOS and Android apps without compromising on quality.
The “code once” approach can be considered the key advantage of Flutter over other mobile frameworks. Moreover, when it's a start-up everything is uncertain. There are times when you want to frequently make changes in your mobile application. The “code once run everywhere” approach of Flutter will help you make changes quickly as it is implemented on every platform in a single go.
Firebase as a Backend
Firebase makes the infrastructure serverless and scalable. Google supports Firebase and Firebase provides great support for cloud functions, authentication, real time databases, hosting and much more.
Thus, startups don’t need to invest separately on backend development and management individually.
Take the ‘Native’ Approach
An enterprise software usually needs to handle thousands of records and be extremely secure. While native app development will provide you with the end result but the initial overhead costs increase with initial coding and constant support that is provided.
To achieve the required performance and control with native apps, everything was written twice, hiring developers was difficult and compilation time felt like forever. Again, this is where Flutter turned out to be a saviour! If you opt for Flutter app development, the apps will give the same feel as native apps.
User Interface
An interactive mobile user interface design plays a critical role in generating web traffic and increase customer retention. Mobile User Interface design prepared with tools like a series of pages, buttons and other visual elements enhance the visitors’ user experience and help them navigate through the site. Flutter works exceptionally well with proprietary widget sets. In fact, as Flutter has its own set of widgets it is quite helpful when you want a completely customized UI design along with good interoperability and additional native support.
Development and Testing Cycle
Here are some interesting facts to incline you more towards choosing Flutter app development for your startup.
Development Cycle
Android Full Compilation - 2:10 sec
Android Incremental Compile - 20 sec
iOS Full Compilation - 2:40 sec
iOS Incremental Compile - 40 Sec
Impressed by the Flutter app development speed? How about testing time?
Android Testing
Compile time - 5 sec
Run Time - 1.5 sec
iOS Testing
Compile Time - 2:40 sec
Run Time - 10 sec
Increased Developers’ Productivity
Experience of developers is quite different with Flutter as compared to other mobile frameworks. Google has introduced the concept of “Hot Reload” in Flutter. Typically when a developer has to make changes in the code, he has to re-compile and re-deploy it. Whereas in the case of Flutter reload the code, go back to emulator and you are right where you started off. Thus, the changes can be seen almost immediately.
As discussed earlier, everything is uncertain in a start-up, every change that you want in your mobile application can be reflected almost immediately.
Material Design for Native App Experience
Material Design is Flutter’s design language which helps you manage everything right from how the app animates to the shape and color of a button. Google has created the UI library for Flutter, to help you create rapidly a material design experience for iOS and Android apps that behave appropriately. By this we mean that the app scrolls like how an Android or iOS user expects it to. Thus, with Flutter rapidly create a beautiful native app feeling with a single code base.
Understandable and clear documentation
Flutter is easy to learn and code, all because of the understandable documentation it provides to its users. You can find answers to all your queries in a detailed and simple manner in the Flutter documentation.
Easy integration of complex animation
Flutter is a treasure trove of ready-made widgets like AnimatedBuilder, Animated Container, etc. hence, using these, you can easily integrate the animations you like to have in the application. Also, the Rive’s support for Flutter is like a cherry on the cake.
Rapid prototyping
As mentioned earlier, Flutter is easy to learn and implement. If you are having a tight budget, but wish to experiment with your project idea then you should use Flutter to build your future project.
An excellent catalog of Flutter Widgets
Flutter assists developers in designing striking UI using a variety of widgets. You can select from a pool of widgets and build a native-like app.
Active and growing community
Flutter is relatively new but the community is growing every day. This growing community ensures that each developer’s problem is acknowledged and they find a solution to it.
Supported by Android Studio and VS Code
Flutter extends its support to the most famous Integrated Development Environments namely Android Studio and Visual Studio. You can download the Flutter and Dart Plugins in the IDEs and start using the same.
AdobeXD support
Flutter is now supported by Adobe XD. This enables developers to create and share their personalized designs across various apps.
Flutter 1.17 update:
With the recent release of Flutter 1.17 and Dart 2.8, Flutter is breaking the grounds. It is gaining the maximum spotlight and you can find out about the updates in this blog.
Let’s Conclude!
Last but not the least, Flutter is so easy to learn that you don’t need prior coding experience. Hiring freshers for your Flutter app development can turn out to be a real cost saving for your start-up. We are pretty sure that by now you are convinced that Flutter is a better option for mobile application needs of your start-up.
Hire Flutter developers for your start-up now!
Sagar Bagsariya
Android Developer
